Falling Together (2011) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Penelope Calloway: aka "Pen". College friend of Will and Cat, mother of Augusta.
• Catarina Ocampo: aka "Cat". College friend of Will and Pen
• Jason Rogers: College acquaintance of Pen, Will and Cat.
• Augusta: Pen's daughter.
• Patrick: Former lover of Pen and Augusta's father.
• Tanya: Patrick's wife and mother of Lila.
• Jamie Calloway: Pen's brother.
• Ben Calloway: The recently deceased father of Pen and Jamie
• Margaret Calloway: Pen and Jamie's mother
• Lila: Patick and Tanya's daughter, Augusta's half sister.
• Randall Wadsworth: Father of Will.
• Charlotte Tully Wadsworth: Will's mother; a recovering alcoholic.
• Edith: Pen's imaginary friend.
• Will Wadsworth: Add a description of this character.
• Armando Cruz
• Samantha Denham-Drew
• Amelie
• Kirsty
• Lola Lita
• Damon Callas
• Kiki Melloy
• Lola Fe
• William
• Kara
• Mama
• Selena Bass
• Ruben
• Lola Graciela
• Mr. Venverloh
• Philip
• Joseph Cort
• Luis
• Marisol Ocampo
• Virgin Mary
• Louie
• Ulysses
• Eliza
• John Deere
• Mark Venverloh
• Jing Jing
• Liam
• Eleanor Rex
• Manuel
• Trent Bly
• Susan Davis
• Pedro
• Lolas
• Paul Westerberg
• Lacey
• Charlotte Wadsworth

Quotes edit see section history

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• “You like your little pockets of solitude but you're not made for being alone for long. There were people who could live on their own and be happy, and then there were people who like Pen and Margaret who needed the falling together, the daily work of giving and taking and talk and touch.”

• “"You mean you're not on your way home?""Not unless you mean you. I'm on my way to you."”

  Pen & Will

• “Pen and Will looked at each other and smiled the kind of smiles people exchange when they have known each other for a very long time...Pen had the sensation that, right then, they were two bodies caught in perfect balance, the forces pulling them together precisely equal to the ones keeping them apart, Pen on one side of the doorway, Will on the other and what she understood is that all the forces were love and that she was the opposite of lonely.”

  Pen

• “It was even before she was actually in the ocean, before she was surrounded on every side by streaming, swirling, darting, infinitely varicolored glory, while she was still riding in the snow-white water strider of a boat (delicate outriggers arching over the blue water) that took them from Alona Beach to Balicasag Island that Pen realized it: sometimes there is nothing to do but surrender yourself to wonder.”

• “You must stop measuring-over and over-the line between loving and being in love. You must offer yourself, whole, to the cobalt starfish (and the orange one and the pale pink one and the biscuit-colored one with the raised, chocolate-brown art deco design) and to the clear, clear water and to the sweep of shining sky and to the silver scattershot of leaping fish (an entire school skipping across the ocean like a stone).”

  Pen

• “The coral reef off Balucasag Island packed more gorgeousness per square centiimeter than any other place she had ever been. At the same time that it was exactly like something she had seen on a nature show because everything-from the imperious butterfly fish trailing their scarves to the brown undulating ribbons that Pen assumed were eels to the neon blue coruscations, so penny-small and quick that they might have been tricks of light--each thing, every individual scrap of embodied beauty, was palpably, unmistakably alive.”

• “Pen had expected to look down and see fish, and she did, but when she looked to the side, there they were, too, suspended next to her face or flowing by in iridescent streams.”

• “When Pen dove downward, the fish were above her as well. She knew that she was an intruder, but she didn't feel like one. She felt like just another living creature, glowing and streamlined among the corals, corals like ferns and hair and platters and Queen Anne's lace. She stayed as still as she could and watched a parrotfish glide by, stippled,striped, and marbled with so many luminous pastels that it looked like a fish-shaped painting by Monet.”

• “The creature was perfectly motionless and so exquisitely constructed, from the delicately wrinkled forehead to the flaring, rose-petal-shaped ears to the strong, knobby, shockingly human-looking hands. Pen stared and stared, happiness pouring through her, giving her the gift of its wild gold regard, and she could have sworn that it wasn't just she, but the whole forest that caught its breath.”

  Pen

• “It was strange and dignified, and Pen believed that she had never in her life felt so honored to be in anyone's company. She had come across the wide, tilted, spinning world and landed here to become one of two animals, looking at each other in a deep green wood. She was overcome. She longed for the moment to never end, but the ending was right there, waiting. Stay, she wanted to tell the tarsier, but it couldn't stay. It's endangered, she thought, and the thought broke her heart.You are endangered, she thought with grief.So are you, said a voice impatiently. So is everything. But we're here now, aren't we?”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• “That no matter what happens, loving someone to the best of your ability is exactly the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do.”

  Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers

• “Since you left there’s been a you-shaped space beside me, all the time. It never goes away.”

  Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers

• It mattered, being a person who stayed, who counted herself in, for good.

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• She could imagine sustaining certain emotions at that pitch for that long—love absolutely, grief probably, guilt maybe—but hatred was exhausting and gave so little back.

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• It was simply this: for the first time, she understood that it was possible to form an opinion about a person, an opinion based on solid evidence and a vast quantity of justified self-righteous anger, to even have this opinion reinforced by trusted colleagues, and to be, at least partially, wrong.

  Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers

• Pen thought, You are like me. You like your little pockets of solitude, but you’re not made for being alone for long. There were people who could live on their own and be happy, and then there were people like Pen and Margaret who needed the falling together, the daily work of giving and taking and talk and touch.

  Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers

• If a boy they had branded, once and for all, as a complete and irredeemable cad could reveal himself to be an incomplete and potentially redeemable one, what else might be possible?

  Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers

• “It was like reading,” she would try to explain later, and she wasn’t talking about phonics. She didn’t break him into syllables—shoulders, hair, shirt collar, hand, nose, cheekbone—and put him back together again; she didn’t sound him out. He was a language she knew, and it was whole-word recognition: Will.

  Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers

• a person who believed that people who loved each other were different from everyone else, from the world in general, exempt from the usual pressures of time and change, of growing older or of growing up. When it came to love, Will’s friend Pen was that rare and dangerous thing: a true believer.

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• “If you knew more about him, maybe he’d lose his power to hurt you.”

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Cebu
• Philadelphia
• Hong Kong
• Bohol
• New York
• Boston
• Vancouver
• Wilmington
• Ohio

First Sentence edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Rump Slap: The term gets its origins from Westerns when a man who was going to be hanged was sitting on a horse with a noose around his neck. When the horse's rump is slapped, there's no turning back. The deed is done. In this case, a rump slap is a statement made that ruins a love interest for another person.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Marisa de los Santos (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3604.E1228 F35 2011
• Dewey: 813

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction

More Books Like This edit see section history